Tragically Hip, Eric’s Trip Featured In Polaris Podcast EP13

The Tragically Hip’s 1992 album Fully Completely and Eric’s Trip’s 1993 album Love Tara albums are the focus of this Polaris Podcast episode thanks to their recent Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize hall of fame designations.

Veteran East Coast arts reporter and Polaris juror Stephen Cooke talked about the unique sound of Love Tara.

“Around that time I think Neil Young was touring around with Sonic Youth as his opener and Eric’s Trip are kind of what you would get if you actually combined those two elements into one force,” said Cooke on the podcast.

Michael Barclay, a Polaris juror and author of the forthcoming book The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip, discussed the “Canadianness” of Fully Completely.

“Gord Downie quite consciously wanted to claim stories he felt were his birthright as a Canadian,” said Barclay. “The Tragically Hip are known as Canada’s band, they’re known for writing about Canada and dropping a lot of place names. This is the album why. He never really did it again after this… He could have easily wrapped himself in the flag for the rest of his career. He didn’t.”

The Polaris Podcast is available in iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, Spotify, and on podcast distribution services such as Acast, Overcast, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, Pod Knife and TuneIn.

Listen to the episode now